1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology for managing a cost of print jobs by adding additional information, such as a billing code, to a print job in a print system and collecting a log of the additional information.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, a print history management system has been implemented, which counts information such as printed document names, print dates and times, paper types, sizes and orientations, the number of printed documents, and a color type of printed documents (e.g., color or monochromatic documents) corresponding to each user. The print history management system associates information, e.g., customer information and a print unit cost, which is not added by print applications and printer drivers, with a print job and counts such information as a part of a print log (print history). The print history management system utilizes counted information for billing such as studying print tendency from counted results. On the other hand, in order to prevent wasted printouts from being generated, a system has been provided, which preliminarily sets the number of printouts that are available for each user so as to determine and restrict an upper limit of the number of printouts that can be generated by each user.
One method for associating additional information with a print job has been provided, which generates a print job by inputting, when generating the job, information from a print setting dialog box and writing the input information to a region (e.g., a header) other than a region in which print information is stored by a printer driver. However, it is necessary to change the driver that generates a job. Accordingly, this method cannot be applied to existing systems. Thus, a method has been provided, which displays an information input dialog when a job is sent to an image processing apparatus after the job is generated by a client personal computer (PC) and is then stored in a spooler. However, usually, jobs are sequentially sent in the order of spooling one by one at a time. Accordingly, in a case where the job to be sent is other than a first one, it takes long until the job is sent in its turn. Thus, sometimes, a user logs off a computer before an information input dialog box is displayed. Consequently, the user cannot input information. Accordingly, sometimes, because the leading job waits for input of information, processing of subsequent jobs is not performed. To prevent occurrence of this situation, in a case where no information is input for a job from the information input dialog box for a predetermined period of time, the job is canceled as timeout. Consequently, this method has a drawback in that a user having issued a print request to a printer does not receive a printed document.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-131831 discusses a technique that in a case where a leading job is queued for a resource (e.g., in a case where a printer runs out of specific paper), an image processing apparatus pauses the leading job and performs the next job in the queue.
In the conventional technique of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-131831, generally, a storage unit of an image processing apparatus has smaller capacity than an information processing apparatus that doesn't implement that technique. Thus, a large number of jobs or a large job cannot be paused. Suspension of such jobs may result in a system halt. Even in an image processing apparatus having a storage unit of large capacity, it is inefficient to send a print job, which cannot be immediately performed, from an information processing apparatus via a network. Additionally, unless a user having issue a print request remains at or goes back to the image processing apparatus, the user cannot cancel specific conditions, e.g., waiting for a resource.